Cloudflare Keeps 1.1.1.1 Out of Piracy Blocking, Escapes Penalties In France (torrentfreak.com) 60
An anonymous reader quotes a report from TorrentFreak: Cloudflare doesn't block pirate sports streaming sites through its 1.1.1.1 DNS resolver in France, only through its CDN. The Paris Judicial Court has now accepted that stance, rejecting [French pay-TV provider] Canal+'s request for penalties of 50,000 euros per site, per day. Interestingly, the court's conclusion relies on statistics provided by Canal+ itself. [...] As a result, Cloudflare will not be penalized under these orders, even though its public DNS resolver is not blocking the sites in question. That is in line with the company's long-standing claim that it doesn't interfere with its DNS.
In its recent transparency reports, Cloudflare repeatedly stated that it hasn't blocked any content through 1.1.1.1, despite orders from French and Italian courts. "To date, Cloudflare has not blocked content through the 1.1.1.1 Public DNS Resolver," the company's latest report reads. [...] Blocking through the CDN is another matter. According to the same report, Cloudflare geoblocked 1,238 domains in France in the second half of 2025, all under a single court order. In the first half of the year, it geoblocked 662 domains under seven orders. Cloudflare recently explained its position to the European Commission, in a submission (PDF) to its Counterfeit and Piracy Watch List consultation, stressing that global public DNS resolvers should not be used to block or restrict access.
Instead, it highlights its real-time pirate stream blocking program, which allows vetted rightsholders to flag pirate streams that run through its network. These streams are disrupted "within seconds," Cloudflare says, without any DNS or IP address blocking. "For live content, where speed is crucial, Cloudflare has built real-time mitigation mechanisms that allow vetted rightsholder partners to flag infringing streams. When those streams are running through our network, we act on them in seconds," Cloudflare informed the Commission. For now, Cloudflare can continue to block pirate sites through its CDN only, while its 1.1.1.1 DNS resolver remains untouched. Canal+ can still appeal the rulings, so it may not be the last we hear of it.
In its recent transparency reports, Cloudflare repeatedly stated that it hasn't blocked any content through 1.1.1.1, despite orders from French and Italian courts. "To date, Cloudflare has not blocked content through the 1.1.1.1 Public DNS Resolver," the company's latest report reads. [...] Blocking through the CDN is another matter. According to the same report, Cloudflare geoblocked 1,238 domains in France in the second half of 2025, all under a single court order. In the first half of the year, it geoblocked 662 domains under seven orders. Cloudflare recently explained its position to the European Commission, in a submission (PDF) to its Counterfeit and Piracy Watch List consultation, stressing that global public DNS resolvers should not be used to block or restrict access.
Instead, it highlights its real-time pirate stream blocking program, which allows vetted rightsholders to flag pirate streams that run through its network. These streams are disrupted "within seconds," Cloudflare says, without any DNS or IP address blocking. "For live content, where speed is crucial, Cloudflare has built real-time mitigation mechanisms that allow vetted rightsholder partners to flag infringing streams. When those streams are running through our network, we act on them in seconds," Cloudflare informed the Commission. For now, Cloudflare can continue to block pirate sites through its CDN only, while its 1.1.1.1 DNS resolver remains untouched. Canal+ can still appeal the rulings, so it may not be the last we hear of it.
Re:DNS is a tyrant's paradise (Score:5, Interesting)
I'm pleasantly surprised to see a rare sane decision from courts who think their word is physical reality, but this shouldn't even have come up in the first place.
Re:DNS is a tyrant's paradise (Score:5, Interesting)
Don't appeal, just maliciously comply: "Okay, we've blocked all of France. Welcome back to the dark ages."
Yes, and I think Cloudflare was likely on that point. At least, I would have been.
They are right to take the approach they are doing. First stop is education and challenging the orders. Educate the politicians and the courts on both the technology and the reasons behind the way the technology operates. Fight it in the courts because that's the right thing to do, even if bad actors want the harm and also technically illiterate folks don't understand the harm, the moral grounds need the fight to be fought.
ONLY after that fails, absolute simple, blind, malicious compliance. If France refuses to listen to the technologists and wants the ban, that's fine, roughly 25% of the global websites will be blackholed in France, and sites that rely on those will also shut down. Any and all requests get met by a redirect to the French court order. When the politicians and the courts demand the impossible and want to nuke themselves to the online dark ages despite people telling them they're making a mistake, so be it.
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all you get is a void of power where a local, or even worse, a "sovereign" solution will fill that void. look at russia.
it's especially dangerous in Europe due to 1) extreme trust in their institutions and 2) spite for everything coming from outside, especially america. Far too many europeans even in this "technical" website justifying whatever the EU is trying to regulate now, especially if it's an american app or website. The mindset of "if the government is banning it, it means it's good for us" is scar
Re: DNS is a tyrant's paradise (Score:4, Insightful)
"it's especially dangerous in Europe due to [...] spite for everything coming from outside, especially america."
This is so catastrophically stupid I cannot imagine writing this. The Internet? Windows? Unix? Etc etc etc
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I notice you have just changed your stupid unintelligible signature for and equally stupid and unintelligible one!
If you were a native English speaker you would understand it immediately, Ivan.
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Some of us are capable of holding 3 distinct thoughts at once, sorry about your disability.
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Trump is the the only President in my lifetime to not have a pet and by all accounts he doesn't like animals, inching him closer to just ontologically evil, that is, if he wasn't already so senile. And he hates women too.
You think saying I have TDS is an insult? I want more of it. I want to hate the motherfucker more.
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It's funny - Thanks to your efforts, I suspect virtually every
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The best way to teach them the perils of trusting government is to encourage them to do so.
As they're learning, slowly and painfully.
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we have enough corpos dictating internet practices and standards (chrome) as it is, given them the power to blacklist sites (and no one even checks the math?) and we'll be weeping for the freenet pipe dream
Good! (Score:5, Interesting)
Good on Cloudflare for not manipulating DNS records.
Good on the Paris court for not being a bunch of ding dongs.
Boo to Canal+ for being a bunch of ding dongs.
Does it seem odd to anyone else that piracy sites would use Cloudflare as a CDN?
Re:Good! (Score:5, Insightful)
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If they are dumb enough to appeal the decision, the next thing that CloudFlare does is ban France from accessing their 1.1.1.1 DNS. Problem solved.
Play stupid games, win stupid prizes.
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Pirate streamers may use outsourced platforms that then use CDNs (think Discord). The stream originators may not be aware or care about the infrastructure. Going after CDN operators is valid as they carry the actual pirate traffic.
Going after public DNS providers is like going after the guys that deliver phone books to your doorstep (or used to, back in the day). The domain registrars are the place to go if you don't like certain domain names. After all, any bozo can stand up a recursing DNS server that dir
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Does it seem odd to anyone else that piracy sites would use Cloudflare as a CDN?
No. The idea of using a CDN stems from the game of Whack a Mole. It's so quick and easy to fire up a CDN again when it gets taken down.
1.1.1.2 (Score:3, Interesting)
As a side note instead of using 1.1.1.1 consider using 1.1.1.2 and 1.0.0.2 to block most of the nasty stuff.
Or Quad 9 which is 9.9.9.9 (or 9.9.9.11). https://quad9.net/service/serv... [quad9.net]
Re:1.1.1.2 (Score:5, Funny)
where is the hostfiles guy...
Re:1.1.1.2 (Score:5, Funny)
He's waiting for his hosts file to load into vi so he can edit it...
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omg that throws me back. The guy always trying to sell his "host file engine" as a good way to do... I don't even know what.
I guess he never heard of just putting up his own forwarding DNS server with blackhole stub zones and changing DHCP to hand that out.
Now we can just install AdBlock Home and be done with it.
Re: 1.1.1.2 (Score:1)
The obsession with DNS is stupid (Score:3)
A good place to see that politicians are generally clueless and incapable or unwilling to see facts. I mean, I can run my own recursive DNS with no problems and the only thing I lose is some performance from caching. There is not even a reasonable possibility to block this in the network.
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I saw internet demonstrated in Europe 1980
I see. When you witnessed this demonstration, 46 years ago, did they mention anything about surveillance capitalism? How about online radicalization? Was the potential for the disruption of "community cohesion" brought up? We're there any thoughts shared on the matter of pirating copyrighted digital content? How much time did they spend on "digital sovereignty" and the future dominance of US based Big Tech over global data and communication?
I suspect not much. So perhaps we're not really discussing
Re:The obsession with DNS is stupid (Score:4, Informative)
politicians are generally clueless
Europe is essentially incompatible with the internet. They never asked for it, and it's been nothing but trouble for Europe ever since it appeared. Had the clueless politicians you mention understood what it was at the time, they would have outlawed it immediately.
Tim Berners-Lee invented hypertext while working at CERN.
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Re: The obsession with DNS is stupid (Score:3)
No, he didn't. It was invented in 1965 (concept) or if you like 1967 (actual production.) Tim created ENQUIRE in 1980.
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Tim Berners-Lee invented hypertext while working at CERN.
Which has nothing to do with internet, but is a protocol and mark up language that runs
on top of the internet.
He invented the world wide web. And that is actually only a reinvention: as we had gopher already, and wide area information services (WAIS/WISE?)
The internet is DARPA and the follow ups: TCP/IP and the surrounding infra structure protocols like DNS.
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Comparing WWW to Gopher is like comparing the car to a horse.
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It is exactly the same.
Just one technology lost and the other one won.
Similar to VHS versus .... well, don't remember how it was called.
I do not know much about the protocols of Gopher, but instead of HTML they used TeX/LaTeX.
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And yes, I meant html not hypertext. Mea culpa.
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No idea why you think Europe, or its politicians, are afraid about or are against the internet.
That does not make any sense.
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No idea why you think Europe, or its politicians, are afraid about or are against the internet.
That does not make any sense.
I agree and that was actually the gist of my reply to the OP to begin with, if you had followed the thread.
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Now do the USA.
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Nah. I'll leave you to the whataboutery.
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When all sides of the debate are equally stupid ignorant dolts it's not whataboutism.
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You do realize where the WWW was created, right? Well, you probably do not.
Re: The obsession with DNS is stupid (Score:3)
Blocking DNS is like preventing illegal raves by taking the street numbers off the buildings.
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Exactly... you block such-and-such range, I change to a DNS outside of that range, and we keep going back-and-forth until you've blocked the entirety of the 'net.
(is there such a thing as a 'legal' rave?)
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(is there such a thing as a 'legal' rave?)
In the late 90's a Christian group near my town setup a drug-free and alcohol-free (and I guess Satan-free) "rave". I didn't go, but reports were that it was pretty lame and "too many middle schoolers". Without drugs and people wearing whatever (or sometimes topless), it was just kids dancing with outdated trends like pacifiers and Cat in the Hat hats.
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Exactly... you block such-and-such range, I change to a DNS outside of that range, and we keep going back-and-forth until you've blocked the entirety of the 'net.
YOU do. Most people don't. Most laws and rulings don't deal with individual cases attempting to bypass it. A very significant portion of the population have no idea how to change their DNS settings.
That said this is becoming a bit more pointless in the past 2 years with major browsers shipping with DoH enabled by default.
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A good place to see that politicians are generally clueless and incapable or unwilling to see facts.
In most cases politicians have no obsession with DNS. They simply recognise that DNS services of ISPs is one of the few things they can control for any company that's registered within their country. It's not like they have authority outside their borders. The fact that *you* can bypass it is irrelevant. Most people don't. It's a solution to the uncommitted, and an attempt to block incidental piracy, not to put in place a technical solution that would stop the highly technical folk of Slashdot or those comm